Friday, February 29, 2008

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

TF2 (20h) - Back to its best. Another map was released on the big Friday update and it's got all the fun of the originals all over again. More maps (No, make that more quality maps) is al that's needed to keep it alive. No other changes necessary.

After all the fuss about the medic unlockable guns, nothing was in the update to do anything of the sort. *Shrug*

Football Manager 08 (3h) - Managed to look through a couple more possible players, but on the whole it's been putting me to sleep rather than making time disappear.

Mythos (2h) - Server availability is keeping me away. Would have made an excellent LAN game, but it wasn't to be.

World of Warcraft (1h) - Started playing it as a test with Ben. May look at doing a whole WoW weekend for the youth group with trial accounts for those without. Hopefully be able to crack into level 20+.

Zero Punctuation Has released a new review, this time of Sim City Societies. It was probably one of the more boring reviews I've seen him do, but at the end I was about to can it when the short that followed looked familiar. Ahh, the TF2 stylings. What's this a heavy?

A small black phone icon appears in my system tray. It is an icon of a black rotory dial phone with the handset rising off the phone. When I scroll over it I see the message: "Close Speaker Phone Companion". Left click and the icon in the system tray disappears, right clicking does nothing.

And the answer ...

Ok. this icon is not a malware, or virus. It's an option you made playng with your sound card.My sound card is a SoundMax. And detects when an aplication is using the microphone.Here is what you have to do:If you have SoundMax integrated soundcard, open the soundmax control panel. (you will find it in control panel, or the system tray. like a blue icon, with 'play' symbol on it

- Open the preferences and go to the microphone tab.At the Microphone enhancements chose No filtering.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Still madly busy at work, doesn't put you in the best of moods to do a writeup of games you hardly got to play in the first place ...

TF2 (10h) - I've sat out a couple of [QGL] matches, but have had some alternate fun with GU fun maps and 2Fort bashups.

Mythos (8h) - After hearing about this before christmas from DJ Wheat as the successor to Diablo II, I signed up for the beta. It took a while to get in, plus I missed the email that got junkmailed.Plays pretty well and I'd agree with the sentiment that it's a lot more like D2 than others like Hellgate London. Servers are up and down a bit though, and it's laggy from Australia.

Football Manager 08 (5h) - Been mulling over the Gateshead issue and tested a couple of other scenarios to take over the club. It seems unlikely and a waste of good playing time to rush through to the end of a season playing a team I no longer cared about.The optimiser in me couldn't bare to put up with the thumb twiddling. One night I dream-thought about restarting from the beginning of the season. Just ignore the work put into Barrow and move over to Gateshead for a fresh start. As it turned out it was a real fresh start as there was NO-ONE at the club apart from youth players and greys. Not even a coach. After giving Barrow the flick they accepted my offer to coach immediately.

First up, an assistant manager. Without an AM it's really hard to weed through the chaff when looking for players and coaches. you either get useless people clogging up the lists or people that simply won't sign no matter what you throw at them. I found a couple of likely AM's, but nothing like the Wunderkind from Sweden they had under their wings in the mid-season save. The AM that eventually signed had been on my shortlist from my Barrow days. Good judgement all round and a 6 star defensive once all the other coaches take the burden off him.

With the 'interested players' filter back in place the next order of business was to find another couple of specialty coaches. I eventually picked up another 4, but no real standouts as they struggle to teach at 6 stars. Might need a couple more by the time the season is through, but there isn't anything out there that is interested in the position.

Next up is to get a team together. At least I don't have any useless players on the books soaking up a weekly wage, but without any real comparisons every potential player is seen as a 'must buy' by the scouts. I ended up bringing a lot on trial so the coaches could give me some more relevant feedback. After paying heavy for some solid players in key positions it at least gave the scouts something to compare to. The team looks shakey, but we haven't even made it to the first warmup match so there's time to keep digging ...

I've also considered writing this stage of the game up as a blog akin to the Andy Preece one. Since Sandy's family came from that area I could write it up as a fake, yet autobiographical log from the perspective of myself in the game as well as Sandy's ventures into antiquity. With the lack of effort I'm showing on this blog it's not looking like a sustainable idea :( ..

Crusader Kings (4h) - I've been trying a couple of strategies out from the save after holding Spain. Most revolve around bumping off my son's wife as she seems barren, and at 31 time's a-wastin'.

Fun alright. It's been a while since I've laughed so hard at the screen. The rugby map was awesome with 2 teams fighting over one 'ball' (intel case) placed in the middle of the field. You need to get the ball over the opposing line, which then brings into play defenders, turrets, etc. 2nd time playing the map it was ruined somewhat by more than 1/2 the players going snipers, but it's a hoot as scout or rocketboy.

Others like Yaargh and mario kart were fun too for a while, but I think they'll get boring pretty quick without a solid goal in mind. Party hats add to the festivities as well as exploding confetti & balloons for frags.